MxMo LVII: Barefoot in the Garden

It's Mixology Monday time again, and this month's theme (courtesy of Dave at The Barman Cometh) is "Flores de Mayo" - cocktails with floral ingredients. Serendipitously, when I got word of this installment I already had a cocktail up my sleeve (figuratively, otherwise it could've gotten a bit messy) that would fit the bill. A little back story, if you will:

I love the smell of celery. When I was a little girl, one of my favorite foods was this tuna casserole my mom made with celery in it. I loved being there when she was chopping the celery and the aroma filled the kitchen. But I never would've dreamed of putting celery in a cocktail until that article in Martha Stewart living showed me how to make celery and bay leaf-infused vodka. It wasn't long until celery martinis became one of my favorite things. On my post about the the celery martinis, commenter Frederic, of Cocktail Virgin Slut, helpfully pointed out that celery pairs well with St. Germain, absinthe, and other similarly herb-rich spirits. Veery interesting. He also said that celery works well with...tequila??

I had to try this.


Celery-Infused Tequila
1 1/2 cups tequila
2 celery leaves
1 celery stalk, cut in half

I always get the celery for my infusions from the farmer's market - I swear it has more flavor. If you can't locate any locally, try using organic celery. Infuse the tequila in an air-tight jar for two days. Shake the jar occasionally. When the allotted time has passed, strain out the tequila, bottle it, and store it in the fridge.

Verdict: Surprisingly delicious. The agave and celery harmonize beautifully. It even tastes, bizarrely, a tiny bit sweet. Take the celery tequila, pair it with lime, St. Germain and a little Lillet Blanc and you have...

Barefoot in the Garden
1.5 oz celery-infused tequila
.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
.75 oz simple syrup
.5 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur
.5 oz Lillet Blanc

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker full of ice; shake and strain into a chilled glass.


I think I'm in love. This cocktail is a series of delicious contradictions - it's herbal but bright, sweet yet complicated. It's not quite like anything I've ever made before - and yet I can't stop drinking it. I think I'll make one to enjoy, while barefoot, in my little garden. Which might put me pretty close to perfect happiness.

Winter White Sangria

A few weeks ago, Houston was in the sway of something resembling Winter - the temperature dropped below forty for almost two weeks, the sun did not come out, and a couple of days it even FROZE and everyone in our lovely city lost their collective shit. Of course I'm also a total wimp when it comes to cold weather, because hello, I live in Houston, so I stayed at home and drank hot tea and took long hot baths and dreamed of summer and sangria.


During which time I thought, hey, I don't think I've ever made a sangria with cucumber. It seemed like an interesting challenge - the savoriness of cucumber in a sangria. I though about the Mr. Stair, the pretty green pear sour that I had to puree a cucumber to make. With that as my inspiration, it wasn't long until...

The Winter White Sangria
A white sangria recipe with pear, cucumber, blood orange, and St. Germain elderflower liqueur.

1 bottle dry white wine (pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc)
1/2 cup eau-de-vie poire william (pear brandy)
1/2 cup St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1 pear, cored and sliced
8 cucumber slices
1/2 blood orange, cut into half-rounds

Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and chill overnight (or for at least 8 hours). (Most sangrias get better as you continue to infuse them, but you actually don't want to steep this one much longer than 8 hours or the cucumber will become too pronounced.) Serve in a glass over ice.

Verdict: I did done good. Beautiful and crisp and fresh, with a lingering sweetness. Just the thing to tide you over until spring.

The His & Hers Gin & Tonics

I've discovered that I love making drinks on the fly. People tell me what they like, and I try to make a drink that will suit their tastes. Here are a couple of cocktails, cooked up by yours truly at a few different holiday parties, that were especially well received. You can think of these two GnT (that's Gin & Tonic, for the uninitiated) variations as "his" and "hers" Gin & Tonics. I bet you'll be able to guess which is which. But don't let yourself be limited - I like them both.


The Hemingway Gin & Tonic
It's the GnT meets the Hemingway Reviver: refreshing, savory, challenging.

2 oz gin
juice and peels of 1/4 lime
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
tonic water (or soda water)*

Add 2 dashes of bitters and the juice and peels of 1/4 of a lime to an old-fashioned glass. Fill the glass with ice, add the gin, and top with tonic water. Stir once and serve.


and then there's...
The Very Special Gin n' Tonic
A little twist on the St. Germain Gin & Tonic. The lime balances out the St. Germain nicely for a drink that is sweet but complex.

2 oz gin
1.25 oz St. Germain
juice of 1/4 lime
tonic (or soda) water*

Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice. Add the gin, lime, St. Germain, and fill with tonic water. Stir once and serve.


*In the interest of full disclosure, I feel obliged to point out that these drinks were originally made with soda water, not tonic water, since I think tonic water is nasty and bitter and don't usually keep it around. So technically, to start out with, they were gin & soda variations, not gin & tonic variations. For the purposes of this experiment, I purchased some tonic water, and it was every bit as terrible as I remembered, but somehow it made the drinks taste better. Confused? I sure was. Anyway, feel free to substitute as you please.

Cheers.

Edited to add: There has been much discussion on my facebook page about what is the best brand of tonic water. I don't really feel qualified to weigh in on this, since I got the store brand, but take note that if you make these drinks properly, in an old-fashioned glass full of ice and with 2 oz of gin, you won't need much tonic water. More like a splash. I know a lot of people make their GnTs half and half, but this is more like a gin and gin and tonic. Yum.

The French Bulldog

There is pretty much no limit to the places I will look for inspiration for my next drink. Case in point...this one got started in the shower. I have this grapefruit and lemongrass shampoo, and one morning I thought - "this smells lovely. I wonder if I could make it into a drink?". Only, you know, not with actual shampoo. So I knew grapefruit and lemongrass were a hit, and I knew that lemongrass and St. Germain (seriously, I can't get enough of this stuff) played well together, and I knew that grapefuit and gin were good together because that's a salty dog. (The Salty Dog is a classic cocktail, and also a pretty great dive bar in Port Aransas. (Seriously. If you're ever in Port Aransas, don't miss their karaoke night. Life-changing, maybe.))

Armed with this knowledge, I mixed them all up together, fiddled with the proportions a little - and it was good.


The French Bulldog
1.25 oz gin
1 oz Texas Rio Star red grapefruit juice (these are back in season - so love your booze and make it fresh.)

1 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1.25 oz Dry Lemongrass Soda

Combine the ingredients in a mixing glass (a pint glass works well) full of ice. Stir for 30 seconds and strain into a cocktail glass.

Verdict: This drinks wins for both ease of creation and sheer deliciouness. It's a beautiful balance of all the flavors. And it doesn't hurt that it so damn pretty.

Edited to add: It looks like the jerks at the Dry Soda Company have discontinued the lemongrass flavor, so if you must have lemongrass soda, you'll have to make your own. Or, what is much easier: substitute lemon perrier for the soda. I promise it's just as delicious.

The Original

My neighbor Jessica came over one night. I offered to make make her a drink. She said she wanted something "not too sweet". Here's what I came up with:

The Original

1 oz St. Germain

2.5 oz Dry Lemongrass soda (possible substitute: perrier?)

Top with champagne.

Just sweet enough.

Jessica liked it a lot. Soon the glass looked like this:


And then like this:


Jessica also thought my photos could use a bit of variety, so she took these. Thanks, neighbor.

The Dream Team

This week I did something very atypical, which is - I made a fantasy football team. This would seem, at first glance, to be absolutely foolhardy, since I know next to nothing about football. And seeing as the season has not actually begun yet, there are still plenty of chances for my team to be an epic failure. But, on Tuesday, with a lot of help from the football gal, I participated in my first draft, and now I've got what is (I think) a pretty decent team. I have Chris Johnson, and Steven Jackson, and Tom Brady (hot!)** and some guy named Jermichael. (As a person who strives to create cocktails which are innovative mashups of familiar ingredients - I appreciate this name.)

So, what I've learned thus far is: having a good team is really important. The other day I came across a cocktail that teamed up:

1. St. Germain

2. a margarita

3. cucumber

4. Fever Tree Bitter Lemon Soda*

*What?? This is a mixer that was recommended by loyal reader Rosann way back in the Pimm's Cup days. I had been wanting to try it.

That, my friends, is a good team. So, in (hopeful) anticipation of all the glorious beatings that will soon be delivered by my fantasy football team***, I mixed up one of these puppies.


The Escapology
(from the Burger Bar in San Francisco, via sfist)
1.5 oz silver, un-aged tequila
.5 oz St. Germain
3/4 oz simple syrup
1 oz lime juice (fresh squeezed!)
4 thin slices of cucumber (farmers' market!)
Fever Tree Bitter Lemon Soda

In a shaker, muddle the cucumber slices with a splash of the simple syrup. Fill the glass with ice and add the remaining ingredients, except for the soda. Shake, strain into a glass over ice, and top with soda. You don't want to add too much soda or the drink with get too bitter. I poured mine into an old-fashioned glass with a handful of ice in the bottom and then filled with the soda, and that was just perfect.

Verdict: Sweet, summery, and delicious. Surprisingly, tastes not very much like a margarita. Tastes not very much like booze, either (although I sometimes worry that my definition of "tastes like booze" is not quite that of a normal person, since many drinks that I would describe as simply "tasty" are described by other people as "really, really strong"). Not that that's a bad thing. There's this delicate interplay of lime, cucumber and tequila flavors going on, and the soda makes it light and refreshing. With a lineup like this, it's hard to go wrong.

**Update: Tom Brady is still hot, but my gosh, what the hell is up with his hair? Get a haircut, Tom. You're embarrassing the team.
***Another Update: As of monday night, the first of these beatings was officially delivered. Cheers.

MxMo the First: The Summer Old-Fashioned

Before there was the Backyard Bartender, there was Mixology Monday. Every month, mixologists from all over the globe (I am not lying - this month there's one from Germany) create drinks to fit a particular theme. I stumbled across the site one day while looking for a recipe and was immediately delighted and awed and overwhelmed. It was like I was a cocktail adventurer standing on the edge of the cocktail Grand Canyon - it was so beautiful, and there was so much out there, and I could not possibly explore it all. But I wanted to try.

This is the first mixology monday since the inception of the backyard bartender (so I guess sometimes it's not every month), and the theme (and the host blog) is Brown, Bitter and Stirred. Make a drink that is brown, possibly because it is made with some kind of brown liquor, and...tastes bitter and is stirred. (I might have cheated a little on the "bitter" part. I am still learning to like bitter things. I do not yet have the palate to appreciate, say, campari, which other people seem to think is wonderful. But my cocktail contains bitters, so...that's a start?)

Of course when I think "brown", I think bourbon, my very favorite of the brown liquors. Problem is, when I think bourbon, I do not think summer. More like, sitting around a campfire trying desperately to stay warm. That's what bourbon is to me. Unfortunately, although in some places the weather may have started to resemble that lovely season they call "fall", here in Houston it is still hotter than hell. The other day I got into my car and the thermometer read 112 degrees. I think the last time I saw a thermometer reading 112 degrees was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. (Or, y'know, just last summer. It gets hot here.) (Also: second Grand Canyon reference in one post. I love the Grand Canyon.)

You know what else I love? Bourbon.

So how could I summer-ify bourbon? Here was my thought process: I have, in the works (meaning: the idea is in my head), another drink involving apples and lavender, because the internet told me this was a good flavor pairing and I am dying to try it out. I thought about adding bourbon to the mix, since I knew that bourbon and apples were good together - Dale Degroff says so. (Also: bourbon + apple cider is a winner.) So the only question was - bourbon and lavender? Well, a google search yielded enough intriguing results to make me think I was on the right track. (The bourbon french toast with lavender butter? Must. try. now.)

I wasn't really sure about trying to pass off a drink with apple in it as "bitter", so instead I turned to our old friend, the old-fashioned. (The exact recipe for an old-fashioned is one of those things that cocktail geeks always argue about, but everyone seems to agree that the basics are: bourbon, sugar, orange, (in some capacity) and bitters.) What I was going for was an old-fashioned that was was light and a bit floral, but still tasted like an old-fashioned. After a few tries (okay, maybe a lot of tries) I got it right. Here it is:

Lavender Old-Fashioned
1.5 oz bourbon (or 2 for a stronger bourbon flavor)
.5 oz fresh-squeezed orange juice
.5 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur*
1 oz Dry lavender soda**
dash of angostura bitters

*I know I'm a little behind the game, but I just discovered St. Germain and I have been putting it in pretty much everything. This blog calls it "the bacon of the cocktail world" (because it goes with everything), which I think is both funny and true.
**Tried this originally with muddled lavender greens from the garden and was unconvinced. (My lavender, the "Goodwin Creek" variety, stands up well to our crazy heat but inexplicably never blooms, so all I have to work with are the greens.) So the only local ingredient here is the garnish. I promise to try harder next time.

Mix all ingredients but the soda in an old-fashioned glass full of ice. Stir lovingly for 30 seconds. Add the soda. Garnish with an orange slice and a sprig of lavender.

Yum.

Mr. Stair

I wanted to try the Mr. Stair pretty much as soon as I got my copy of Food and Wine Cocktails 2009. It's right there on the front cover, all pretty and opaque and pale green. Problem was, the recipe calls for...cucumber juice. As you can imagine, I was a little bit intimidated by this. How does one liquefy a cucumber? In the wise words of my friend Sarah, "juicing a cucumber sounds a little bit like milking a cat. Possible but uncommon and possibly unpleasant".


So I shelved my dream of a pretty green cocktail until sometime after this post, when I picked up the book again and realized, wait. I juiced a blackberry...why the heck can't I juice a cucumber? (Plus, I had just made the post about St. Germain and was pretty pumped about making cocktails with it.) Turns out the cucumber was a bit more work, but I persevered. Here's what you have to do - cut the cucumber into little bits. (And I mean little, like 1/4" cubes.) You don't need to juice the whole cucumber if you just plan on making a few drinks...about 1/3 will do. Throw them into the blender with a little bit of water (I added 1/2 oz), and start on a low setting, working your way up to higher settings until the cucumber is liquefied. Then strain the cucumber through a sieve, as described here.

Then gather together:
2 oz. Williams Pear eau-de-vie*
3/4 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur
1/2 oz lemon juice (fresh squeezed please)
1/2 oz hard-fought cucumber juice (from a cucumber grown by some nice local farmers)
1/4 oz simple syrup
The original recipe calls for a dash of orange bitters, but I like it better without. If you have some, feel free to try it both ways and judge for yourself.

*Pear eau-de-vie is a brandy that's made from distilled pears. (As opposed to traditional brandy, which is made from grapes.) This stuff is expensive, but surprisingly versatile. It shows up here, came in handy in the St.Germain sangria, and is an essential ingredient in the pear/bourbon old-fashioned that is one of my favorite drinks. (And very likely a future post.)

Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker full of ice. Shake until the shaker is nice and frosty. Strain into a pretty glass.

Credit for this recipe goes to Vincenzo Marianella (at the Copa D'Oro in Los Angeles. (Actually, Santa Monica, which, as Rachel knows, is where Frank Gehry is from)). To whom I say: you, sir, are a cocktailing genius. Also, I may have to plan a trip to LA just to visit this bar.

Verdict: Very pear-y. (It's a teeny bit of a disappointment after all that work I went to, but I don't taste the cucumber at all.) Beautifully light and sweet - looks and tastes not quite like any other cocktail I've ever had.

The Happy Birthday Page St. Germain Elderflower Sangria

In the world of mixology, St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur is Kind of a Big Deal. In the 2009 edition of the book of cocktail recipes that Food & Wine magazine publishes every year, there are 10 different cocktails featuring St. Germain. (For comparison, there were only 9 with vodka.) So St. Germain is new now and super trendy, and, like many people who were nerds in high school, I have a certain suspicion of anything incredibly popular. So it was with a bit of reluctlance that I bought my first bottle.


My mind began to change when I first held the bottle in my hand. I know, it's a bottle of liquor, not a baby, but seriously - this bottle is gorgeous. Just it being on the counter was enough to give my kitchen a certain air of sophistication. And the taste - is beyond incredible. Fruity and floral, sweet without being too heavy. Other bloggers have attempted to break it down into its component parts, but I just thought - "I bet this is what ambrosia tastes like". (I just looked up ambrosia on Wikipedia, to make certain it was what I thought it was, and the article described it as "a kind of divine exhalation of the earth". St. Germain elderflower liqueur is a divine exhalation of the earth.)

It has a pretty cool story, too - the flowers used to make the liqueur are handpicked, in the foothills of the Alps, during only a few days every spring, by only 40 or 50 different guys, and then transported to the distillery by bicycle. By bicycle. Each bottle has a little label with the vintage year and its own individual number, which should make you feel a little better about paying as much for it as you did.

In other news, Page had a birthday (on July 3rd, which tells you how behind I am with these posts), and Jessie had a party for her, part of which was a talent show. Well, my talents are...singing Total Eclipse of the Heart at the top of my lungs, and making cat noises. So I made sangria. Of course it had to be something original, since Page is an original, and I had that lovely bottle of St. Germain sitting on the counter, beckoning to me. And it was right there on the box, all helpful-like, how great St. Germain is with white wine. And St-Germain is light and fruity and sweet, just like the wines Page likes (I've drunk a lot of wine with Page), so really it was a no-brainer.

People keep asking me how I knew which fruits to add to the sangria, and the answer is: I am a culinary genius. No, the answer is, I looked at a few other blog posts about St. Germain, and people were saying things like "hints of peach!" "hints of pear!" "hints of citrus!", so I started there. The one thing I didn't see was "hints of elderflower!" because apparently nobody else knows what an elderflower is supposed to taste like, either.

St. Germain White Sangria
1 bottle dry white wine*
1 cup Gt. Germain
3/4 cup pear nectar
1/4 cup poire william eau-de-vie (pear-flavored brandy), if you have it**
2 peaches, pitted and sliced***

1 pear, cored and sliced****
1 cup red grapefruit, cut into wedges
1 cup green grapes, cut in half

2 tablespoons simple syrup

*Sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio are good choices for a white sangria. I used Messina Hof's pinot grigio. Yay Texas!

**If not, go ahead and add a full cup of pear nectar.

***I used white peaches, for a more subtle peach flavor, but yellow will work, too.

****Pears aren't very good at infusing, hence the eau-de-vie and the pear nectar. The sliced pear is really more for looks (and post-sangria snacking).

Mix it all up (make sure your pitcher is big enough before you start adding the ingredients!), cover the pitcher, and allow to steep in the fridge overnight (or for at least eight hours).

Verdict: Peach and pear and all sorts of flavors meld together seamlessly into something indescribably sweet and light. Pretty much the perfect summer drink.